"The wireless transmission of power will first be a big factor in promoting world peace, as I said before, because through the great improvement in communication it will lead to a better understanding between nations and break down many of the old prejudices that have lived for so many thousands of years. It will facilitate travel and commerce so that a citizen of the United States will find it as simple and cheap to travel abroad as he now finds it to travel in the neighbouring state. His commercial interests also will spread to foreign countries, and the nations will be so linked with one another socially and commercially that war will be out of the question.
"However, in case war should break out between the nations it will be a conflict of such gigantic proportions, and carried on with such tremendous death-dealing machines, that it will surpass our wildest dreams.
"For one thing, the new art of controlling electrically the movements and operations of individualized automata at a distance without wires will soon enable any country to render its coast impregnable against all naval attacks.
"I have invented a number of improvements of this plan, making it possible to direct a telautomaton torpedo, submersible at will, from a distance much greater than the range of the largest gun, with unerring precision, upon the object to be destroyed. What is still more surprising, the operator will not need to see the infernal engine or even know its location, and the enemy will be unable to interfere, in the slightest, with its movements by any electrical means. One of these devil-telautomata will soon be constructed, and I shall bring it to the attention of governments. The development of this art must unavoidably arrest the construction of expensive battleships as well as land fortifications, and revolutionize the means and methods of warfare. The distance at which it can strike, and the destructive power of such a quasi-intelligent machine being for all practical purposes unlimited, the gun, the armour of the battleship, and the wall of the fortress, lose their import and significance. One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will settle the battles of the near future, if battles we must have.
"The future of wireless power development," explained the inventor, "may render it folly for any nation to have afloat a vessel of war. The secret of another nation's scheme of selectivity or combination of vibrations might be disclosed to the enemy, when the guns of their own vessels might be turned against sister ships and a whole fleet destroyed by shells from their own guns, or their magazines might be exploded by the enemy at will. However, should there be battleships in the wireless future, they will be crewless. They will be manœuvred, their guns will be loaded, aimed, and fired, and their torpedoes discharged with unerring accuracy, by the director of naval warfare seated before a telautomatic switch-board on land.
"The time will come, as a result of my discovery," says Tesla, "when one nation may destroy another in time of war through this wireless force: great tongues of electric flame made to burst from the earth of the enemy's country might destroy not only the people and the cities, but the land itself. I realize that this is indeed a dangerous thing to advocate. At first thought it might mean the annihilation of the nations of the world by evilly disposed individuals. The public might at first look upon the perfection of such an invention as a calamity. We say that all inventions assist the criminal in his work. To-day the safe burglar despises the use of dynamite, turning to electrical contrivances to cut the lock from a safe. It is fortunate for the world, therefore, that 90 per cent. of its people are good, and that only 10 per cent. are evilly disposed: otherwise all invention might be turned more greatly to evil than to good."
CHAPTER V
THE MOTION-PICTURE MACHINE
MACHINES THAT MAKE SIXTEEN TINY PICTURES PER SECOND AND SHOW THEM AT THE SAME RATE MAGNIFIED SEVERAL THOUSAND TIMES—MOTION PICTURES IN SCHOOL—OUR BOY FRIEND SEES THE WHOLE PROCESS OF MAKING A MOTION-PICTURE PLAY.
"IHAVE just been to the moving-picture show," said the young man whose inquiring turn of mind has brought him into touch with so many recent inventions. His friend in the laboratory had just finished a very successful chemical experiment and seemed glad to see the boy.